Richard Whittall:

The Globalist's Top Ten Books in 2016: The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer

Middle East Eye: "

The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer is one of the weightiest, most revelatory, original and important books written about sport"

“The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer has helped me immensely with great information and perspective.”

Bob Bradley, former US and Egyptian national coach: "James Dorsey’s The Turbulent World of Middle Eastern Soccer (has) become a reference point for those seeking the latest information as well as looking at the broader picture."

Alon Raab in The International Journal of the History of Sport: “Dorsey’s blog is a goldmine of information.”

Play the Game: "Your expertise is clearly superior when it comes to Middle Eastern soccer."

Andrew Das, The New York Times soccer blog Goal: "No one is better at this kind of work than James Dorsey"

David Zirin, Sports Illustrated: "Essential Reading"

Change FIFA: "A fantastic new blog'

Richard Whitall of A More Splendid Life:

"James combines his intimate knowledge of the region with a great passion for soccer"

Christopher Ahl, Play the Game: "An excellent Middle East Football blog"

James Corbett, Inside World Football

Wednesday, April 5, 2017

Saudi-Iranian rivalry fuels potential nuclear race

The Saudi focus on nuclear serves various of the
kingdom’s goals: diversification of its economy, reduction of its dependence on
fossil fuels, countering a potential future Iranian nuclear capability, and
enhancing efforts to ensure that Saudi Arabia rather than Iran emerges as the
Middle East’s long-term, dominant power.

Cooperation
on nuclear energy was one of 14 agreements worth $65 billion signed during
last month’s visit to China by Saudi King Salman. The agreement is for a feasibility
study for the construction of high-temperature gas-cooled (HTGR) nuclear power
plants in the kingdom as well as cooperation in intellectual property and the
development of a domestic industrial supply chain for HTGRs built in Saudi
Arabia.

The agreement was one
of number nuclear-related understandings concluded with China in recent
years. Saudi Arabia has signed similar agreements with France, the United
States, Pakistan, Russia, South Korea and Argentina.

To advance its program, involving the construction
of 16 reactors by 2030 at a cost of $100 billion, Saudi Arabia established the
King Abdullah Atomic and Renewable Energy City devoted to research and
application of nuclear technology.

Saudi cooperation with nuclear power Pakistan has
long been a source of speculation about the kingdom’s ambition. Pakistan’s
former ambassador to the United States, Husain Haqqani, asserts that Saudi
Arabia’s close ties to the Pakistani military and intelligence during the
anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan in the 1980s gave the kingdom arms’ length
access to his country’s nuclear capabilities.

“By the 1980s, the Saudi ambassador was a regular
guest of A. Q. Khan” or Abdul Qadeer Khan, the controversial nuclear physicist
and metallurgical engineer who fathered Pakistan's atomic bomb, Mr. Haqqani
said in an interview.

Retired Pakistani Major General Feroz Hassan Khan,
the author of a semi-official history of Pakistan’s nuclear program, has no
doubt about the kingdom’s interest.

“Saudi Arabia provided generous financial support
to Pakistan that enabled the nuclear program to continue, especially when the
country was under sanctions," Mr. Khan said in a separate interview. Mr.
Khan was referring to US sanctions imposed in 1998 because of Pakistan’s development
of a nuclear weapons capability. He noted that at a time of economic crisis,
Pakistan was with Saudi help able “to pay premium prices for expensive
technologies.”

The Washington-based Institute for Science and
International Security (ISIS) said in a just
published report that it had uncovered evidence that future Pakistani “assistance
would not involve Pakistan supplying Saudi Arabia with a full nuclear weapon or
weapons; however, Pakistan may assist in other important ways, such as
supplying sensitive equipment, materials, and know-how used in enrichment or
reprocessing.”

The report said it was unclear whether “Pakistan
and Saudi Arabia may be cooperating on sensitive nuclear technologies in
Pakistan. In an extreme case, Saudi Arabia may be financing, or will finance,
an unsafeguarded uranium enrichment facility in Pakistan for later use, either
in a civil or military program,” the report said.

The report concluded that the 2015 international agreement
dubbed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) to curb Iran’s nuclear
program had “not eliminated the kingdom’s desire for nuclear weapons
capabilities and even nuclear weapons… There is little reason to doubt that
Saudi Arabia will more actively seek nuclear weapons capabilities, motivated by
its concerns about the ending of the JCPOA’s major nuclear limitations starting
after year 10 of the deal or sooner if the deal fails,” the report said.

Rather than embarking on a covert program, the
report predicted that Saudi Arabia would, for now, focus on building up its civilian
nuclear infrastructure as well as a robust nuclear engineering and scientific
workforce. This would allow the kingdom to take command of all aspects of the
nuclear fuel cycle at some point in the future. Saudi Arabia has in recent
years significantly expanded graduate programs at its five nuclear research centres.

Saudi officials have repeatedly insisted that the
kingdom is developing nuclear capabilities for peaceful purposes such as
medicine, electricity generation, and desalination of sea water. They said
Saudi Arabia is committed to putting its future facilities under the
supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

Saudi Arabia pledged to acquire nuclear fuel from
international markets in a 2009
memorandum of understanding with the United States. In its report, ISIS
noted however that the kingdom could fall back on its own uranium deposits and acquire
or build uranium enrichment or reprocessing plants of its own if regional
tension continued to fester. It quoted a former IAEA inspector as saying Saudi
Arabia could opt to do so in five years’ time.

Saudi Arabia’s nuclear agency has suggested that
various steps of the nuclear fuel cycle, including fuel fabrication, processing,
and enrichment, would lend themselves to local production. Saudi Arabia has yet
to mine or process domestic uranium.

Saudi insistence on compliance with the IAEA and on
the peaceful nature of its program is designed to avoid the kind of
international castigation Iran was subjected to. Saudi Arabia is likely to
maintain its position as long as Iran adheres to the nuclear agreement and US
President Donald J. Trump does not act on his campaign promise to tear up the
accord. Mr. Trump has toughened US attitudes towards Iran but has backed away
from tinkering with the nuclear agreement.

“The current situation suggests that Saudi Arabia
now has both a high disincentive to pursue nuclear weapons in the short term and
a high motivation to pursue them over the long term,” the ISIS said.

Saudi ambitions and the conclusions of the ISIS
report put a high premium on efforts by Kuwait and Oman to mediate an
understanding between Saudi Arabia and Iran that would dull the sharp edges of
the two countries’ rivalry.

They also are likely to persuade Mr. Trump to try
to pressure Iran to guarantee that it will not pursue nuclear weapons once the
JCPOA expires in a little over a decade. That may prove a tall order given Mr.
Trump’s warming relations with anti-Iranian Arab autocracies evident in this
week’s visit to Washington by Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi and an
earlier visit by Saudi Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Sporticos

Ads

Soccer Results

The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer does not promote, link to or provide videos from any online sources who distribute illegal streaming content over the Internet with domains registered in the United States of America

Top 100 Soccer Sites

Subscribe To

Subscribe by Email

About Me

James M DorseyWelcome to The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer by James M. Dorsey, a senior fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies. Soccer in the Middle East and North Africa is played as much on as off the pitch. Stadiums are a symbol of the battle for political freedom; economic opportunity; ethnic, religious and national identity; and gender rights. Alongside the mosque, the stadium was until the Arab revolt erupted in late 2010 the only alternative public space for venting pent-up anger and frustration. It was the training ground in countries like Egypt and Tunisia where militant fans prepared for a day in which their organization and street battle experience would serve them in the showdown with autocratic rulers. Soccer has its own unique thrill – a high-stakes game of cat and mouse between militants and security forces and a struggle for a trophy grander than the FIFA World Cup: the future of a region. This blog explores the role of soccer at a time of transition from autocratic rule to a more open society. It also features James’s daily political comment on the region’s developments. Contact: incoherentblog@gmail.comView my complete profile